Background:
This study examined the differences between faculty and trained standardized patient (SP) evaluations on student professionalism during a second-year podiatric medicine standardized simulated patient encounter.
Methods:
Forty-nine second-year podiatric medicine students were evaluated for their professionalism behavior. Eleven SPs performed an assessment in real-time, and one faculty member performed a secondary assessment after observing a videotape of the encounter. Five domains were chosen for evaluation from a validated professionalism assessment tool.
Results:
Significant differences were identified in the professionalism domains of “build a relationship” (P = .008), “gather information” (P = .001), and share information (P = .002), where the faculty scored the students higher than the SP for 24.5%, 18.9%, and 26.5% of the cases, respectively. In addition, the faculty scores were higher than the SP scores in all of the “gather information” subdomains; however, the difference in scores was significant only in the “question appropriately” (P = .001) and “listen and clarify” (P = .003) subdomains.
Conclusions:
This study showed that professionalism scores for second-year podiatric medical students during a simulated patient encounter varied significantly between faculty and SPs. Further consideration needs to be given to determine the source of these differences.